Crowded House
Fremantle Prison
Wednesday, December 3 2025
One of the towering giants of the Australian music scene the last forty years, Crowded House played two sold-out pop-up concerts at Fremantle Prison this month, in addition to their headline slot for Red Hot Summer in the Swan Valley.
The soundtrack of an entire generation, from the Walkabout pubs of London to backpacker campsites in the Dardanelles, and besides innumerable Antipodean beaches across so many hazy summers, Crowded House were perhaps not the band always immediately sought out but were always there when needed. With a back catalogue overflowing with absolute classics, the setlist was more a question of what to leave out rather than what to add.
Indeed, with their repertoire so extensive, Crowded House dispensed entirely with the need for a support band. Or rather, this evening they performed as their very own warm-up act. With a relaxed, mostly acoustic opening set, primarily with new material from an unnamed album due out next month, the boys selected a new band name, Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and invited to the stage absolute premium-tier backing singers, Vika and Linda Bull.
As the sun fell towards the horizon and the limestone that surrounded the audience was set aglow, the boys riffed on the location, its jagged history, and the convict nature of colonial Australia as a whole. The ghosts of the past could almost be heard, from band, venue, and Walyalup itself, most notably on the ode to absent friends and golden moments, Last Summer.
As Nick Seymour played a bass guitar the size of a ukulele, and Neil Finn sat half-spinning in a chair the entire time, at several points this section of the evening felt like a laidback rehearsal, or, with Neil and his two sons Elroy and Liam on stage, a direct view into the Finn family living room.
Her Majesty’s Pleasure ended their performance on that timeless paean to Melbourne weather, Four Seasons in One Day —for the first distinctly noticeable time tonight, the audience leant in, and dozens of phones came up to eye-level to capture.
After a break of half an hour, Crowded House came to the stage; officially, Seymour now had a full-size bass and a resplendent orange suit. In the meantime, the sun had set, night had enveloped the open-air venue, and the full moon was rising above the beautiful, brutal, abandoned cellblocks. The perfect moment, therefore, to start the main set with Distant Sun.
Crowded House, and Neil Finn in particular, have always been located at the precise juncture between their own self-described jangle-pop, expansive storytelling, and pure poetry. Only when reassessed with fresh ears, stepped back for a moment, does it become apparent how dense the lyricism is in most of these songs, otherwise so familiar to the audience as to seem blindingly obvious.
From the rose-coloured reminisces of Don’t Dream It’s Over, through the overwhelming yearning of Nails in My Feet, to the endless summer vibes given by Weather With You—the level of plot detail given in each of these, and in almost every Crowded House track, is at times astonishing. Wrapped up under the glossy sheen of pop music sensibilities, the songs exude a rugged, hardy, yet exceedingly comfortable character that will continue to hold them in good stead for many years to come.
The intra-band banter continued, especially between the two remaining original members. With so much silver in their hair, it was fortunate a mining concession wasn’t granted on the spot. Neil Finn and Seymour danced, grooved, and jammed across the stage, as the decades melted back, possibly all the way to 1985 itself.
The duo are the core of the group and have been through many reinventions and rebuilds, and while they’re not quite finishing each other’s sentences yet, they still showcased the lived-in ease that comes from a lifetime of performing together. The sheer reality of that scenario on stage put in mind how many friends, workmates, or others the audience may equally ever share a ruby anniversary with.
As much as Neil Finn and Seymour were the spine the rest of the current group was built around, similarly the songs themselves were the framework the audience could safely lose themselves in. Across a three-song stanza, from When You Come through Private Universe to the always welcome Not The Girl You Think You Are—not their biggest hits, but essential classics nonetheless—all members of the band were given the opportunity to improvise extensively within their own solos.
Well into what became a marathon-length concert, these moments of magic reinvigorated the evening—the destination was within sight, but the audience did not wish the journey to end.
Neil Finn located a piano and began quite softly for the well-earned, very well-anticipated nod to Split Enz via Message to My Girl, through to the harder-edged plinky-plonk roughness of Chocolate Cake. After these, Seymour proceeded to descend through another blazingly familiar bass line, and, surely not, surely it couldn’t be—but yes, Crowded House still had the capacity to surprise, even this deep into their career. A cover of Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart, combined with one of the many versions of Take Me To The River—unexpected, uncalled for, yet utterly sublime.
The night ended, as only it could, with an achingly heartfelt rendition of Better Be Home Soon. Fabulous and iconic, yet how this howl of guttural loss ever became near enough a national anthem (see also Chisel’s Khe Sanh) remained an absolute head-scratcher.
The audience departed in the cool night air, left to ponder what had just occurred. It was yet another hazy summer spent with the band, imprinted on the memory, as so many before. In the constant discussion between quality and quantity, Crowded House went the route of the classic taco ad and suggested, ‘Why not both?’
A super-sized event, across both entrée and mains the band had been on stage for just shy of two and a half hours. They had somehow collated a greatest hits collection and half an album’s worth of unreleased material, whilst nonchalantly leaving half a dozen other classics scattered on the green room floor.
All of this had combined to be an exceptional evening with some very special people. The gravitational pull in this country of the band’s own legendary Sydney Opera House farewell in 1996, and the memory of those no longer with us, means we should make the absolute most of these national treasures while we can.